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The Rise of the Protester-Terrorist

Anti-Israel protesters demonstrate in front of Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck, New Jersey, US, on March 10, 2024. Photo: Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

JNS.org – For Jews the world over, the past eight months have been little more than a series of catastrophes. Contrary to their expectations, American Jews have proved to be no exception. They have discovered that no Jewish community is ever immune to history.

American Jews are reeling from this terrible realization. To an extent, so are all Americans, and with good reason. After all, what has emerged since the Oct. 7 massacre has been rather remarkable: A self-declared “antiracist” movement that embraces antisemitism. An unholy alliance between a totalitarian theocratic movement and ostensibly secular progressives. Imperious institutions of higher education that happily tolerate the most brazen violations of their own codes of conduct. Politicians who preach morality while calling for genocide.

Above all, the first antisemitic mass movement in American history has arisen. There have been antisemitic movements in America before, of course. But never have they been this large, politically influential, violent and explicitly opposed to the fundamental principles of their own society.

Certainly, many of those participating in this movement are simply ignorant conformists riding a wave of protest and outrage. They likely have little idea of what all the fuss is about, but they enjoy the opportunity to vent their inchoate anger. Moreover, thanks to a collaborationist media, there is a terrible glamour to self-righteous mayhem. It is trendy to hate Israel and the Jews, and, sadly, America is a society of trends.

The movement is being led, however, by a remarkable character: the protester-terrorist.

The protester-terrorist is not an entirely new phenomenon. Contrary to the claims of most historians, American protest movements have always had a violent side. The riot, large or small, has been a constant throughout American history. In a nation founded in a violent revolution, it could hardly be otherwise.

The protester-terrorist is quite different from other protesters. Unlike the passive resistor or even the rioter, the protester-terrorist does not take to the streets in order to confront oppressive authority or engage in random acts of violence. Instead, under the guise of activism, the protester-terrorist pursues the work of terrorism in another register. He does not set off bombs in buses or slaughter women and children. But his strategy is the same: to use the public display of horrific acts to intimidate others into silence and surrender.

This tactic of the “propaganda of the deed” is not new either. But today’s iteration is unlike its predecessors in two ways: its nihilism and its institutionalization.

Regarding the former, rarely have we seen an ostensible protest movement so brazenly hurl all morality to the winds. Today’s protester-terrorists are not simply immoral; they are anti-moral. Their ethos is a total inversion of ethics. To them—and we know this because they say so—murdering, raping, kidnapping and torturing innocent people is a good thing. So is racism. So is genocide. So, for all we know, is the destruction of the world. The protester-terrorist is not just morally bankrupt. He is satanic. He is morality’s adversary.

As for institutionalization, it is clear that we are seeing the endgame of one of the most successful conspiracies in American history. Half a century ago, having failed to seize power through riot and terrorism, the radicals of the 1960s turned to the infiltration of powerful institutions to transform them into weapons for radical political action. This “long march through the institutions” was wildly successful. The American university system and the elite it manufactures are now ruled by a dictatorship of the professoriate that employs intellectual and at times physical terrorism to impose its ideology on a nation that does not want it.

Never before, however, has the professoriate so publicly revealed the dark heart of its ideology. Like the neo-Nazis and Klansmen it ostensibly despises, the regime has sent out its protester-terrorists on a campaign of racist hate crimes that specifically target Jewish students and faculty regardless of their views on Israel, the Palestinians and indeed anything else. In doing so, the regime revealed that protester-terrorism is not just a weapon but the essence of the regime.

Given all this, we must wonder what comes next. The possibilities are not encouraging. The protester-terrorists may make American Jewish life unlivable. American Jews may find themselves in the same position as their Western European brethren, with occasional pogroms storming through their neighborhoods, their synagogues and schools under constant military guard and a general sense of helplessness and oppression pervading their lives. Stripped of the political, professional, cultural and academic success they have enjoyed for decades, they will be forced to ask the previously unthinkable: Is it time to leave?

For Americans in general, the moment may be even more portentous. The ultimate target of any terrorist—protester or not—is the society in which he lives. Indeed, there is no doubt that the protester-terrorists’ next target will be the American political system. The protester-terrorists have made it quite clear that they are perfectly willing to destroy one of America’s major political parties. Plans are already underway for a full-scale assault on the Democratic National Convention.

This ethos of the suicide bomber will not end with the Democrats. When any terrorist movement is permitted to grow until it reaches critical mass, no society, regardless of party, can survive what follows.

None of this, however, has to happen. The protester-terrorist has only become so dangerous because he has been allowed to. Supported by powerful forces in American society, he has been granted near-total impunity for decades. If those powerful forces are brought to heel, if they are forced to obey the ethics and laws that everyone else must obey, if their indulgences are ended, the protester-terrorist cannot survive.

The imperative, then, for American Jews and non-Jews alike, is to demand that the long march through the institutions at last be halted and turned back. Perhaps more importantly, they must insist that the responsible authorities recognize a simple fact: A terrorist is always protesting something, but this cannot and must not grant him immunity for crimes that threaten not just a beleaguered minority but the republic itself.

The post The Rise of the Protester-Terrorist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Charlie Kirk Sought to Encourage Debate — His Murder Must Not Stop It

Charlie Kirk speaking at the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

I first became familiar with Charlie Kirk after October 7, 2023, when my TikTok algorithm began showing me videos of him fiercely, and quite effectively, debating students on college campuses, often those in keffiyehs and with purple hair.

Thus began my fascination with what I soon learned was a man who was dedicating his life to debating and promoting what he believed in.

Charlie Kirk was the face of the young Republican movement, respected even by some Democrats. He had a promising future ahead of him. As Ben Shapiro wrote: “That kid is going to be the head of the Republican National Convention one day.”

Kirk dedicated his life to debate. To disagreement. To hearing the other side and persuading with facts and truth. And this, tragically, cost him his life. His assassination represents the meager and devastating state of the West, a state we have slowly, almost willingly, been accepting for years now.

There is a deep intolerance for differences. People do not want to be persuaded. They do not want to consider another perspective. Instead, they condemn what they believe is wrong, clinging to black-and-white narratives, even when an entire gray area holds the broader picture. They turn their heads away from nuance. Kirk aimed to change that. He devoted his life to it, fully aware of the risks.

As Adam Rubenstein wisely wrote for The Free Press: “Kirk was not naïve. In the video after he is shot, you can see a security team of at least half a dozen bodyguards surround him and spirit him away. Like anyone speaking their mind in public these days, he knew there was a risk.”

Kirk’s assassination signifies a low point for this country — and another attack on free speech. It was an assassination of dialogue, of diplomacy, of the ability to disagree without destruction. And perhaps the most bitter irony is that it all happened on a college campus, an environment that should foster growth mindsets and open-mindedness.

This attack was not only an attack on Charlie Kirk. It was an attack on freedom of thought and expression. And while it succeeded in killing the bright and young 31-year-old so many of us admired, I hope that is a rallying call to protect the broader freedom of speech we still enjoy — at least in part — in this country.

Alma Bengio is Chief Growth Officer at The Algemeiner Journal and founder and writer for @lets.talk.conflict

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Jews Are Indigenous to the Land of Israel — and Everyone Should Know It

The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Few words in modern political discourse carry as much distortion as “Palestine.” Today, the term is wielded not as history but as a weapon — designed to delegitimize the Jewish State and recast Jews as foreign colonizers in their own homeland.

Take away the propaganda, however, and one unshakable truth remains: the Jewish people are the indigenous nation of the Land of Israel. The Arab claim to “Palestinian indigeneity” simply does not line up with history.

The Jewish people trace their roots back over 3,000 years to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who lived in the land of Canaan — later Israel. By the time of King David, Jerusalem was the capital of a united monarchy, and Solomon’s Temple stood as the spiritual and political center of Jewish life. Even after the Babylonian exile, Jews returned, rebuilt, and re-established their national life in Judea.

Despite invasions, destruction, and exile, Jews never abandoned their homeland. They remained in Jerusalem, Galilee, Hebron, Safed, and along the coast. Their prayers, rituals, and festivals kept the bond to Zion alive. This is not the story of outsiders — it is the story of the land’s first and most enduring nation.

Rome tried to sever that bond by force. After the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century, Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as Syria Palaestina , borrowing the name of the long-vanished Philistines, and turned Jerusalem into Aelia Capitolina. It was an act of erasure, meant to punish the Jews by striking even their name from the map.

But the attempt failed. Jews continued to live, pray, and return to their ancestral soil. A new label could not undo thousands of years of rootedness.

The Arab story is very different; their origins lie in the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest records available to us describe nomadic tribes in Arabia and the Syrian desert. Their cultural centers were Mecca, Medina, Yemen, and Petra. It was only in the 7th century, with the rise of Islam, that Arab armies exploded out of Arabia and conquered the region. By 636 CE, they had invaded Byzantine Judea; within a century they ruled from Spain to Persia. Their presence in Judea was the result of conquest, not continuity.

For over a thousand years, under successive empires — Umayyad, Abbasid, Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman, and finally British — the local Arab population never called itself “Palestinian.” They identified as Arabs, Muslims, Christians, or by their city and clan. In fact, during the British Mandate, the word Palestinian referred almost exclusively to Jews: the Palestine Post was a Jewish newspaper, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra was Jewish, and the Palestine Brigade that fought in World War II was Jewish.

Many Arabs in the region rejected the label, insisting instead that they were part of greater Syria or the wider Arab nation.

Only in the mid-20th century, particularly under Yasser Arafat and the PLO, did a separate “Palestinian” identity emerge. It was born not from centuries of shared history but from a political need: to create a narrative that could challenge Jewish nationhood and delegitimize Israel. It was, and remains, a tool of war by other means.

This is the historical bottom line: Jews are the only people with an unbroken, 3,000 year bond to the Land of Israel. The name Palestine was a Roman punishment, not an Arab heritage. Arabs arrived in the 7th century as conquerors from Arabia. The idea of a Palestinian people is a modern invention, forged in the 20th century as part of a political campaign against the Jewish State.

Israel is not a colonial project. It is the restoration of an ancient nation to its ancestral homeland. Jews are not foreigners in Judea; they are Judea’s people. By every measure — historical, cultural, and even genetic — the Jewish nation’s claim is authentic, continuous, and undeniable.

Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.

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Israel Attacked Terrorists in Qatar — and the Media Attacked Israel

Vehicles stop at a red traffic light, a day after an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

On Tuesday, September 9, Israel targeted those who sought its destruction and planned the barbaric October 7, 2023 massacre.

Israel launched the daring attack on the Hamas leadership in their Qatari safe haven, after their ongoing refusal to agree to a Gaza ceasefire deal and in the aftermath of a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem, which Hamas claimed responsibility for.

But the media still shilled for Hamas by making Israel look like a rogue state attacking a key diplomatic player and destroying any chance for peace.

News outlets used three methods to achieve this goal:

  • Direct accusations
  • Subtle differentiation between a “legitimate” Hamas political wing and its military one
  • The glorification of Qatar as a business hub rather than a terrorist hub

The Independent and The Washington Post shamelessly employed headlines that portrayed Israel as the regional bully and an aggressor randomly attacking other Middle East countries in a bid for regional domination.

Sky News even blamed Israel for a previous attack on Qatar, although the Iranian regime carried it out:

After we publicly highlighted it, Sky quietly rectified its faux pas with no acknowledgment of the correction.

Meanwhile, the Economist was worried that attacking the very terrorists who ordered the mass murder of Jews on Oct. 7 was “a bridge too far” and that Israel had “crossed a line:”

And the BBC’s security correspondent called Israel’s surprising act of self defense “a campaign of score settling:”

NPR and The Wall Street Journal took the subtle approach of creating a false dichotomy between Hamas’ military and political wings — although the entire group is internationally designated as a terror organization.

This naive approach depicted the targeted Hamas leaders as legitimate officials simply because they carried pens and wore suits instead of AK-47s and green headbands.

They may not have got their hands dirty but this does not absolve them from orchestrating numerous bloody terror attacks, including the slaughter and kidnapping of thousands of people in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Finally, many outlets decried the violation of Qatar’s sovereignty, painting it as a peace-seeking state focused on business and regional cooperation, rather than a patron of terrorists.

The New York Times went as far as calling Qatar “a safe haven for business and tourism in a volatile region,” while it was, in fact, a safe haven for the region’s top jihadists.

How can this media distortion be explained? Why is a facade of legitimacy conferred upon terrorists in suits?

There are only two possible answers: Either the media believe the facade the terrorists want to sell, or they are carrying out an anti-Israel agenda.

Both options are detrimental to professional journalism, as well as to basic human ethics.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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